1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to computer systems and, more particularly, to implementation of data warehousing systems.
2. Description of the Related Art
As increasing numbers of business functions within an enterprise are automated, the amount of data generated by the enterprise correspondingly increases. Such data may be distributed throughout the enterprise, for example within database systems and other types of systems implemented by different departments or geographical units. In some cases, useful analysis of enterprise data may be made across the natural boundaries between systems or locations that exist. To facilitate such analysis, a data warehousing system may be employed to aggregate data from multiple different systems or locations within a single system, such as a single database. Analysis tools may then target the single, aggregated system rather than various distributed data sources, which may simplify the design of the analysis tools and improve analysis performance.
Often, data warehousing systems support the storage and querying of very large quantities of data using high-end computer systems configured to provide needed analysis performance. However, high-end systems that are highly tuned to a particular data warehousing application can be expensive to procure and maintain, and may not scale well as the data warehousing needs of the enterprise grow. If only a single data warehousing system is provided, for example due to expense, data availability may be compromised if the single warehouse fails. On the other hand, if multiple data warehousing systems are provided, analysis applications may lose the simplicity of assuming a single, aggregated data source. For example, analysis applications may need to be configured to track the location of desired data within the multiple data warehouses.